Karachi: Speculators and punters were all over the market, lapping up low-valued stocks, which pushed the daily volume to seven-month high at 427 million shares on Thursday.
The dominance of speculative forces in the market was reflected also by the fact out of the 10-top traded stocks, as many as nine were priced below Rs16.
After a volatile session, the KSE-100 index closed up by 32.16 points at 26,373.24.
Already since the start of the New Year, the KSE has gained 4.4 per cent, closing each day in the positive territory.
On Thursday, mutual funds took profit, while individuals were again major buyers as represented by the figures released by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan.
Foreign investors decided to sell, stocks worth $0.61m.
Bulls were pinning hopes on the on-going moves on privatisation; the upcoming monetary policy statement with discount rates generally expected to remain unchanged and the quarterly corporate earnings season to begin in right earnest for further rise in index which already was at its all-time high.
Speculation continued amid consolidation as sale of state-owned enterprises, mainly in oil and banking sector, were expected to rise over Rs100bn to meet commitments with IMF.
Investors awaited major corporate earnings announcements and ECC decisions on OMC margins and gas pricing due next week Analyst Ahmad Tariq at Next Capital commented that the cement sector was able to retain the spotlight and once again was the most traded sector.
The sector remained mixed with 12 companies in the negative out of a total of 27 in the sector.
